After the Plane Crisis

by Jeffrey Hart

The Bush administration handled the reconnaissance plane crisis quite well, despite rumblings from the direction of "The Weekly Standard" and growls from some in Congress. With Colin Powell in the foreground, the administration was steady but firm, "regrets" and "sorry for the loss of life" but no "apologies for wrong doing." Typically, in the official Chinese translation, our language was transformed into Chinese vocabulary that did admit wrongdoing.

But, though this incident is now over, the prospects in the middle distance are ominous.

First of all, Chinese behavior from start to finish indicated an unwillingness to adhere to generally recognized rules. When our EP-3E reconnaissance plane was badly damaged in the collision and headed for Hainan island, it broadcast the "May Day" distress call numerous times. The Chinese claimed that no verbal permission to land had been given, and that therefore the landing "violated Chinese airspace."

We may never know whether the "May Day" signal was received. But international practice sanctions the landing of a plane in distress at the nearest facility.

The rules of engagement for reconnaissance flights are also well established. The Soviets, for example, ran regular reconnaissance flights from Cuba up our Atlantic coast. These were perfectly legal as long as they stayed in international waters. It was also legal for us to send planes out to take a look at the Soviet plane. It was not accepted practice for the U.S. planes to "buzz" and harass the Soviet plane, much less play dangerous high-speed tag with it. The Chinese broke all of these rules. Then they orchestrated a vituperative anti-U.S. campaign in their controlled press, including a probably manufactured letter to President Bush from the widow of Wang Wei, the Chinese pilot. This letter insulted Mr. Bush, calling him a coward for not apologizing. If that letter was not manufactured, it certainly was cleared by Beijing.

I think I would have preferred slightly different language in our proposed letter of settlement to Beijing. For example, "If the American plane was in Chinese airspace, we apologize. If the American plane precipitated the accident, we apologize. If neither, we expect China to apologize." This would have had the merit of focusing on the facts, even if Beijing tried to slide away from the facts.

But the collision was not an accident. It was the direct and inevitable result of official Chinese policy. For at least the last two years, China has conducted aggressive and dangerous harassment of our reconnaissance planes flying down that coast from Okinawa. They fly well out in international airspace. Internationally, China is recognized as controlling the sea and air out to twelve miles. But now, in practice, China is claiming something like a 200 mile limit. That is the meaning of the aggressive harassment. As Admiral Dennis Blair, our Pacific commander, commented, "It’s not normal practice to play bumper cars in the air. It’s too dangerous for everybody."

The Chinese are behaving this way because they don’t want us to monitor their large military buildup in Fujian province, directly across the Taiwan Strait.

Central to this is the construction of three missile bases at Yongan, Leping, and Xianyou. The U.S. estimate is that there are a total of 300 CSS-6 and CSS-7 short-range missiles at these sites, though the number may well be higher. These missiles can blanket the island of Taiwan.

There is general agreement that China does not have the naval capability to launch an amphibious invasion of the island. It lacks landing craft and a supply capability. And Taiwan actually has no beaches, as I found to my dismay once when I sought to swim there. Paratroops might be dropped, but would probably be slaughtered.

The projected use of the short-range missiles in Fujian province is plain enough. They are not very accurate. But repeated barrages of, say, 50 missiles might panic Taipei and perhaps bring about negotiations that would lead to reunification.

We are monitoring the situation on the mainland, presumably so that the missile bases can be knocked out either by the Taiwan air force, which is first-rate, or by our carrier planes if necessary.

One scenario for the resolution of the Taiwan issue goes as follows. Down the line, if reformers gain the upperhand in Beijing, the People’s Republic might evolve in such a way that some arrangement which could be called "one China" would be attractive to Taiwan. But China is still a third-world county with average annual income of $3000. It is also a highly controlling dictatorship. Whether its authoritarian politic is compatible with economic development in an information age is a good question.

But Taiwan is evolving. It is a functioning and stable democracy and has a prosperous economy. Sentiment for independence is strong, though prudence requires that no formal declaration of independence be made. Nevertheless, as Taiwan develops its relations with other prosperous Asian rim nations, a willing reunification with the mainland becomes a more and more tenuous idea.

Beijing doubtless understands that time is not on the side of a willing re-unification. Hence the missile build-up in Fujian.

But it also must calculate that if it starts a war and fails, then the existence of the regime will be in peril. It also remembers that when it launched rockets in the direction of Taiwan in 1994, President Clinton dispatched two carrier task forces to the vicinity.

Conclusion: Our best bet now is to strengthen Taiwan’s defensive capability by blunting the missile threat with the four Aegis class destroyers Taiwan wants to buy. If Beijing concludes that failure is a real prospect, they probably will not attack.